


Ink

by ImpOfPerversity



Series: Picaresque-verse [4]
Category: Baroque Cycle - Neal Stephenson, Pirates of the Caribbean (Movies)
Genre: M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2004-11-07
Updated: 2004-11-07
Packaged: 2019-10-02 22:39:05
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,698
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/17272496
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/ImpOfPerversity/pseuds/ImpOfPerversity
Summary: Posted to LiveJournal by Tessabeth in 2004, ported to AO3 by Gloria fifteen years later.Shameless romanticism brought on by NaNoWriMo overload and the unbearable dearth of Jacks therein.





	Ink

His hands, spidery and strong and elegant and somehow sharp, move constantly beneath the weight of rings and dirt; whether he is talking (when they illustrate his spoken words and emphases, and if one knows him well, and watches closely, they also often explain his true feelings, the ones that the words keep well hidden); or working (his hands love his instruments, and certain of his possessions, and every part of his ship, and it shows clear in every infinitesimal stroke of fingertip on wood or brass or steel, a silent, constant litany of adoration); or, most delightfully, when he is here with Jack Shaftoe, his glowingly warm flesh pressed against Jack’s; here, the motion of his hands is the medium in which Jack has learned to read the message of Sparrow’s body, its state and its desires and its needs.

Now, for example; now, as the two of them lie panting and silent, still connected one inside the other, splayed and drained; Jack himself wants nothing more than to close his eyes and drift into sleep while he’s still in this delicious state of bodily satiation, for he knows it to be a brief one, while Jack Sparrow’s anywhere in his vicinity. But those hands take longer than Jack does to spiral down towards sleep, and in the meantime they curl and stroke over Jack’s hot damp skin, one on his right shoulder, one in the palm of his left hand, the only part of Sparrow still in motion; the rest of him lies dead-weight atop Jack, his mouth breathing hotly against Jack’s neck.

Thumbs, spiralling; nails gently scraping lines and curves, and the smaller fingers following behind, colouring the shapes the nails have described, filling them in with the invisibly red heat of smooth fingerpads. It tickles, slightly. Jack loves it. He would return it, but his fingers are not so artistic; they would form only straight lines on Sparrow’s skin. Straight lines that would say nothing. So he doesn’t.

Jack sucks in a deep, contented breath and releases it, slowly, waiting for the sweet ambush of sleep. Already the world is receding, a warm paralysis coming over his limbs.

But Sparrow tilts his head up a little, brings his lips up to Jack’s ear. And he whispers, “Why won’t you let me teach you?”

Jack does not want to talk about it. Not now. But he has been back aboard the _Black Pearl_ long enough to know that his wishes will count for little in the face of a curious Jack Sparrow. If Jack Sparrow isn’t ready to sleep yet, then Jack is unlikely to have any choice in the matter, one way or another.

He mumbles a sleepy reply. “All part of my charm, Jack.”

“Don’t give me that. Why?”

“I don’t need to know. I’ve made it this far not knowing.”

“There’s a lot of things in life you don’t _need_ , mate. For example, you didn’t _need_ to spend the last half hour wrestling naked here with me, inserting various extremities into various bodily orifices till we both came like cannonfire; but – and tell me if I’m speaking out of turn – it was damn fine all the same.” Jack Sparrow, despite his state of utter relaxation, is clearly not sleepy at all.

“True enough,” says Jack with a lazy smile, wriggling just a little and appreciating the wetly viscid slide of his belly against the pirate’s. “Though there was a certain predictable point to that exercise. Not that I mean-” But his amendment comes too late.

“Predictable!” cries Jack Sparrow, rearing up in outrage. “You absolute ingrate, Jack Shaftoe!”

One of the hands illustrates the point with a sharp poke at the rounded muscle of Jack’s shoulder.

“I didn’t mean to imply that the _means_ were predictable, Jack; merely that, where you’re concerned, I can reliably predict the _end_. And you should appreciate that that’s not been the case for me for a long time, not since the Incident, and I don’t consider it to be an unimpressive achievement. So stop making such a dramatickal fuss about it, and can we not sleep, now? Perhaps?”

Sparrow grins, as if to say, _But making a dramatickal fuss is such fun, Jack_ ; but still he persists, with, “You still haven’t answered the point to my satisfaction, darlin’. What’s the harm in learning your letters? It would open up a whole new world to you.”

Jack is silent for some time, and then says, “Perhaps so; but perhaps I don’t have any particular urge to see that whole new world.”

“Whatever do you mean?” says Jack Sparrow, pulling a face as if this is entirely obfuscatory, if not downright inconceivable.

“Maybe not every blind man wants to regain his sight, Jack.”

“Mr Shaftoe, I must say you’re sounding more like me every day, rather than your good self; stop talking in riddles and equivocations and tell me straight what you mean.”

Jack struggles to put it into words. It is a vague concern, and possibly a foolish; but he has used it for many years now to justify his determination not to become a literate man, and it has become quite firmly set in his head.

“I can… listen well,” he says slowly, “and I can learn well, and recall well. Do I forget a thing that you tell me? And yet, Jack, I’ve seen lettered men who can barely take a step forward in the world without their books ‘longside ‘em. If knowledge doesn’t fit in your head, what good is it to you?”

“If knowledge can’t get inside your head in the first place, it ain’t any good either,” counters Sparrow, “and you can learn a lot from books, Jack.”

“Ah, but I’ve got you to read ‘em for me, haven’t I?” And Jack attempts to end the conversation by gently pushing his lover over onto his side, and rolling up against him, and kissing him, slow and deep, in a way that he’s sure will make Jack Sparrow close his eyes; and if he kisses him like this for long enough, then maybe they’ll stay closed, and they can get some rest. Besides which, kissing Jack Sparrow like this is one of the most delightful experiences known to man; certainly much more pleasurable than a literary discussion. Jack hums into Sparrow’s mouth, his tongue writing gentle love letters on his behalf, and Sparrow’s strong arm winds around his waist, pulling him closer. They kiss for the longest time, a kiss that’s like glowing embers cased in honey, till Jack’s quite certain that the matter is dropped. But he’s wrong.

“What if you didn’t have me to read for you?” murmurs Sparrow into Jack’s still open mouth, against his still seeking tongue.

“Well, then there’d be someone else, there always is. Besides which, why wouldn’t I have you?” The thought of not having Jack Sparrow, for any damn reason, makes Jack irritable. Why would he bring up such a thing? He rolls onto his back, and closes his eyes firmly. “Enough. I’m going to sleep, now. Goodnight, Jack.”

He refuses to move, refuses to respond to the clutch of pointy fingers on his chest that insist that Sparrow wants to argue the point further. When they persist, resorting to a rhythmic tapping that's designed to either wind him into rage or turn him to laughter (either reaction probably acceptable to Jack Sparrow), he merely rolls over further, presenting his back to the other man.

“Stubborn as a mule?” mutters Jack Sparrow, darkly. “Stubborn as a bloody Vagabond, more like.” And he turns his back, similar.

But he will fail to sleep as easily as Jack Shaftoe, and within the hour, will be sitting up at the table, a lamp glimmering low so’s not to wake his love. He will have been taken by an idea that had been growing in him for days and weeks, growing darkly and with no certain shape, and yet its form has now come sweetly clear to him. Shaftoe will not stir at the scratch of Jack Sparrow’s nib.

*

When Jack awakes, things are back to normal; he’s curled against Sparrow’s back, his hand on Sparrow’s belly, his face buried in dark hair. Early sun is slanting into the cabin, bright and optimistic, and Jack feels bad for his contrary behaviour of the night before. Really, what sort of fool would bother to argue with someone as precious to them as Jack Sparrow is, and over something as foolish as letters? What could he hope to gain by it?

Jack props up onto an elbow, and gazes down at the sleeping form beside him; every line and curve of it imbued with beauty and meaning. The beauty was always there; the meaning grows with every day, every night that Jack spends in the company of this body. The muscled forearm with its raised veins that talk of swordskill and clambering through rigging and long nights at a storm-driven helm. The subtle valley of waist, rising slightly to a bony hip that talks of, oh, lovely things, but only to Jack; of swaying sighs and grinding delight and trembling need. Not to mention that pale golden curve of arse; Jack lays his hand upon it, fingers spread wide, and his hand seems to him too rough a thing to touch such flesh.

Sparrow doesn’t wake. Jack’s heart swells with love, and an oddly unfamiliar remorse, and he gently places a kiss on the pirate’s shoulder, and carefully sits and swings his legs off the cot.

But in lieu of smooth worn wood, his feet hit paper; the floor around the bed is scattered, littered with it. Littered with words. Pages and pages of them, fast and wriggly and marred with ink blots, squirming over the paper like demented worms. God alone knows what the message is, but there’s most definitely one to be had from it. More likely, one message in the words; and yet another message in their presence all over the floor, spread for Jack’s supposed delectation.

Bloody Jack bloody Sparrow. For Christ’s sake. More annoyed than he should be, simply because a few short moments past he’d been feeling so very forgiving, and loving, and in-the-wrong, Jack reaches behind him and roughly shakes the shoulder that a minute ago was the recipient of his tender kiss. “Oi,” he says, “you, scribbler, Mr I-want-to-teach-you-to-read, what exactly is this mess for?”

Sparrow comes alert quick as a wink, and Jack suspects he may have been awake all along. “What’s that, Jack?” he says, black eyes wide with innocence; but Jack can see the devilry shining behind it. “Oh, I had a few thoughts last night, so I noted them down. For posterity, like.”

“Anything important?” asks Jack, silkily.

“Oh, could be, could be, you know.”

“I take it you ain’t about to enlighten me?”

“Oh… no, I don’t think so.”

“Fine with me,” says Jack, and he stands and walks over the scattered pages to the chair where his canvas breeches hang, and pulls them on. He picks up some pages, and peruses them vaguely, aware of Sparrow’s pitchy stare. The lines dance and wink at him, hiding their import like some harem girl hiding behind her veil. “I’ll just go and ask Mr Gibbs what you were on about, then,” he says, and makes for the door.

“Well, Jack, I’d have to say you probably don’t want to do that,” says Sparrow, and Jack turns to see him stretched out on his back, ankles crossed, hands behind his head, staring up at the low beamed ceiling. He looks beautiful. He smells wonderful, too, rich and saltily warm; still totally sensitised to the man, Jack’s aware of him with every part of his being, and being annoyed with him does nothing whatsoever to allay that. Unfortunately. Jack forces his gaze back up to Sparrow’s face, and struggles to attend to what he’s saying. Which turns out to be: “The content’s fairly… personal in nature.”

“Alright,” says Jack with admirable equanimity, “I’m not _stubborn_ , me; I give in. I shan’t take it to Gibbs. _You_ can read it to me.”

“Well, I could, but… mmm, on the other hand, no; it’s really a message for you, yourself,” says Sparrow, yawning.

“You think I’m going to give in and learn to read just to find out the content of some mad scratchings you’ve dreamt up overnight?” Jack cries, losing his patience and rolling his eyes. Sparrow just grins and shrugs.

“Scratch away,” says Jack, and throws his handful of papers into the air, and slams the cabin door behind him.

*

How many days can this continue?

_As many as he likes_ , thinks Jack Sparrow; and he drags his gaze away from gently snoring Jack Shaftoe, sprawled face down on their bed, and stares again at the paper in front of him, where a large unsightly blot has dropped from the end of his quill. Which is blunt and coarse, and needs reshaping, but he cannot bring himself to do it now. What difference will it make to Shaftoe, if his serifs are not perfectly formed?

Six nights, now, he has sat here writing in the half dark. On two of those nights he was very drunk, and the words are all but illegible to him now, though he recalls the content. On one of those nights the wind was up, and the _Pearl_ bucked merrily, and his penmanship on that night left something to be desired also. Though at least the sentiments were a little less rambling.

Because he will freely admit that he has rambled; rambled over almost all the paper he possesses, and over a fair bit which wasn’t technically his to ramble over in the first place, and over a multitude of pages torn from the back of his current log book, and over the backs of several maps of whose veracity he harbours doubts, and which have therefore been sacrificed to his need for materiél.

What began as a vague, unformed desire to goad Jack Shaftoe into displaying even a modicum of curiosity about the written word has expanded, and swollen, and refined itself into something quite different. It has developed into a painfully magnetic obsession; a self-perpetuating catharsis in which each night’s output, though it purges something that must, without doubt, be purged from Jack, still somehow… generates more.

_Have you no desire to know?_ Jack writes, holding his hand awkwardly above the paper so as not to further smudge the blot of ink. _What do you think I write here? Do you not conceive that it is all written for you, Jack Shaftoe, and about you and of you and to you? All these things which cannot be said to your mocking face but which lie inside a man nonetheless; and it is my belief that they lie inside you, also, but you similarly would not say them to me. Perhaps you would write them to me? Perhaps you would, and the warmth of your skin and tongue and hands and the deep warmth inside your body would be there for me, visible and lasting, mine for always, no matter what occurred. I want that from you, Jack. I want to give it to you and I want to have it from you._

He looks around the floor, where six nights’ worth of rambling reminiscences and declarations and pleas pile and curl, darkening where the equatorial sun has glared upon them; the oldest ones have already been discovered by adventuresome rats. _Must get a new cat_ , thinks Jack.

Six mornings now, Jack Shaftoe has risen from their bed and walked all over Jack’s words and pretended they are not there. And yet every night Jack sits up and writes them down, more and more of them, driven by something he cannot name, something that wants to preserve and keep and embalm the truth of what his heart and body have been through these past weeks. The truth that he cannot speak. And that something takes perverse joy in laying the flayed content of his heart out there, in plain daylight, in a way that is so completely hidden from the object of his desires. There it is; and Jack Shaftoe looks at it, and it means nothing to him. Nothing.

_Perhaps this makes me a fool, a romantic fool, and so be it; you know how I forswore love after losing you, my whole life since that day I refused it. Refused it, until you came back to me; and all the love I should have had in all those years breaks upon me now like some stormy spring-tide, and these last days it is too strong and fierce for me to hold inside. I cannot speak the words that will let it out. But I can write them. Will you not read them? Why, no, my stubborn Vagabond; it seems you will not._

Jack rubs his tired eyes, smearing the heels of his hands black, and tenderly places this last page on the floor where Shaftoe will stand upon it in the morning; he snuffs the lantern, and climbs over his love, and tries to slow the whirling words in his head, to let sleep take him.

But before sleep comes, he feels Jack Shaftoe wake beside him, in the dark, and reach down to the floor; he hears the rustle of paper, and there’s a pause, and then a sigh.

“You’ve done it again, haven’t you?” says Shaftoe. Jack says nothing. It’s perfectly obvious what he’s done.

But Shaftoe is getting out of bed, and Jack hears the lantern being re-lit; he rolls over, squinting, and there stands Shaftoe, naked, holding the lantern high, so that it throws a dim yellow circle of light over the paper-strewn floor. In that mellow light, Jack Shaftoe’s skin seems the same rich gold as the paper; his delicious animal skin, spread tight and smooth over muscle and bone. And there, in other places, his poor scarred skin, stretched pale lavender over damaged flesh that Jack would give anything to be able to rebuild. Jack just watches him, and pounds with love for it all, still overcome with the feeling that his words have generated in him; still sick with it.

Shaftoe puts the lantern down on the table, and kneels by the side of the bed, leaning across to Jack, and puts a hand on the side of his face. “Enough,” he says, gently. “Enough. Tell me, now, what this is about. It can’t just be about my ignorance, Jack. Surely to God. You know me for a stubborn man; you can’t imagine that you can change my mind with all this…” He waves a broad, helpless hand at the floor. “All this scribbling. And I don’t believe that my being able to read is such an important matter that it should keep you awake night after night, neither.” He looks at Jack, and waits; for an answer, an explanation, some sense. Waits through a long heavy moment of silence and watching.

“Jack… d’you understand, I mean, really understand, what writing does?” says Jack Sparrow finally, and gets a quizzical look in return. He sits up, and leans over the side of the cot, grabbing a sheet from the bottom of a messy pile. “Six days ago I wrote this, Jack, and d’you know what it says? That is, by the way, a rhetorical question, and the answer has nothing to do with having your letters.”

Shaftoe narrows his eyes at that, and then essays, “It says what it says, I suppose.”

“Exactly!” cries Jack, and he grabs Shaftoe's hips as if he can shake it into him. “It says what was in my heart six days ago, and it ever will do. If I take care of that piece of paper, Jack, those words will be there forever. Forever.” He lets that word hang there, heavy and momentous.

“Even…” says Shaftoe slowly, and he looks up at Jack, a frown of concentration making his blue eyes dark as Jack’s ever seen them, the lantern casting a flickery halo behind his blond head. “Even if you’re not here. Right, Jack?”

And Jack sees that he understands. Half of it, anyway. And maybe that’s enough.

“Come here,” says Shaftoe, and he stands, and pulls Jack to his feet. He sits at the table, and takes up Jack’s quill; it is awkward in his fingers, he holds it as if it is too small a thing for his hand. “Help me,” he says; and Jack walks round behind him, leans down over his shoulder, and wraps his fingers over Shaftoe’s, positioning them right. Shaftoe turns over one of the scrawled sheets of paper, and the two of them together dip the quill into the ink. Shaftoe pushes it in too far and it will blot. Jack doesn’t correct him.

“What are we doing?” he mutters against Shaftoe’s ear.

“We’re writing,” says Shaftoe. “Writing down things that need to be written down.”

“Such as?” says Jack, his heartbeat thumping.

“Such as this: _I, Jack Shaftoe…_ Come, show me how it goes.”

Jack’s hand over Shaftoe’s hand, writing the words careful and slow.

“That doesn’t look like the other writing,” says Shaftoe, critical and a tad suspicious.

“It’s simpler,” says Jack. “Clearer. No less real, I promise you. And anyway, that writing there was from Thursday night, and you remember the state we were in on Thursday night, I’m sure.”

“Oh, yes; that does clarify it; but to the matter in hand, Jack, now we write: _…tell you, Jack Sparrow,_ ” dictates Shaftoe, and Jack cannot help but add the odd flourish to his own name. Shaftoe’s fingers beneath his try to anticipate the lines, move too hard, too far. “Shhh,” whispers Jack, in his ear. “Gentle. Like… like you touch me, when you’re playing nice…” And he cannot resist licking Shaftoe’s ear, warm and salty, and Shaftoe’s breath hitches in a laugh.

“There,” says Jack, and tries to keep his voice even as he says, “Next?”

Shaftoe looks up at him, and his face says, with every line, _You dear fool!_ “What else would it say,” he says, low and close, “but that I love you? Is that not what you need to keep? Though I’ll say it to you every day, should you be in danger of forgetting, and wish to be reminded of it.”

Jack’s swept away on a rushing flood of _something_ that makes him feel strong as he’s ever felt, and weak as a babe, all in the same moment. “Let’s write that, then,” he says, faintly; but he does not take his eyes from Jack Shaftoe’s, tilted up to his, as he writes it; it will be crooked, and inelegant, and not like his hand at all. But he will treasure it the more for that.

*

“There,” says Jack Shaftoe, when it’s done, and he blows it dry. “There’s your forever, Jack. Though I don’t know why it’s more real to you than my words; or my touch, or my kiss; or the fact that I’m here, in your bed, every night; all of which I hope say the same thing.”

“Not more real,” says Sparrow, pulling Jack to his feet; “Never more real. But this, Jack; this I can fold up and put in my pocket and have with me always. And I thank you for it. Because I want never - _never_ \- to forget the way that you cause me to feel, d’you understand?”

“Perhaps,” says Jack, thinking of the paper that he swallowed a long, long time ago, and what it may or may not have said. What does all this paper say, now? A lot more than he has just written, certainly.

Perhaps some things are worth learning to write down, after all.

He stands, and faces Jack Sparrow, and is about to kiss him when a thought comes to him. “You already bear my mark, Jack,” he says, and bends and licks gently at Sparrow’s nipple and the gold that passes through it. “But I’ll give you another, tonight.”

“Oh, that’s not necessary,” says Sparrow quickly, a brief flash of panic on his features, “I’ve plenty of marks, I think.”

“Ah, I’m not suggesting any more of the bloody sort,” says Jack; he takes his message and lays it on the floor beside him, then picks up the inkwell, and kneels before Sparrow. He stares at the paper with concentration, counts the words, and finds the ones he needs. He dips his finger in the inkwell, and, crookedly careful, writes his love upon the smooth flesh of Jack Sparrow’s torso. The ink runs and smears blackly, and under his touch muscles convulse with laughter, and then with something else. Sparrow’s hands have come to roost upon his head, where they push into his hair, stroke around his temples, curve about his ears. Jack looks up, and smiles, and gets a smile of ivory and gold in return.

“You’re a quick study, ain’t you?” says Sparrow.

“Aye,” says Jack, and he briefly considers arguing a conclusion from this fact, an inference which would illustrate his state of illiteracy as a chosen philosophickal position rather than evidence of incompetence, but decides instead to suspend that thread of conversation; he cannot think straight, here on his knees, with Jack Sparrow’s narrow muscled body before him, pulsing and hardening in response to the words that Jack has written. Instead, Jack says, “And you’ve taught me quite a few things, as I recall.” He does not take his gaze from the other man’s face, but puts his hands on Sparrow’s hips, wets his lips, and runs them, close-mouthed and delicate, over the swollen head of Sparrow’s cock.

The fingers upon his head stretch out in sighing anticipation, and Jack does not disappoint their expectations; he knows now what he can do to make them clutch at him, knows which swirls of tongue will make them twist through his hair like dancing bees, and then what gentle bites, and determined suction will make them skitter frantically across his skin, digging, grabbing at him, pulling him closer; knows that when he opens his mouth and throat and heart and stares up at Jack Sparrow with the look that says, _I want it, give it to me now_ , that they will no longer be able to be bit players in the act, and will take him hard, and hold him strongly still as Sparrow sighs and bites his lip (or throws his head back and groans; or laughs out loud for joy of it; or sometimes, as now, stares and stares and mutters odd imprecations and demands and sweet adoration) and begins to move, and fucks Jack’s mouth just as he would that other part, that other place where Jack wants him to be. But not now, not yet; now, Jack wants to taste him, to feel the gush of him in his throat, to stare him down and tell him with his actions that every part of Jack Sparrow is good and true and right and oh, god, desired. He wraps one arm around his lover’s trembling hips, pulling him tight, hand spread wide to feel the flex of muscle as Sparrow’s clenched buttocks drive him forward into Jack’s hungry throat; his other hand reaches up to one of the pirate’s, clutched upon his head, and twines their fingers together, and is drawn up to Jack Sparrow’s open mouth, and sucked, and licked, and then the meat of his thumb is taken between strong teeth and bitten down upon as his throat is filled with Sparrow’s bitter gouting pleasure.

And Jack Sparrow’s black eyes are on his and are wide with an emotion that Jack knows and shares, and that they have filled one another with. That they have filled this room with, scattered as it is with all these words that Jack cannot read and yet understands in every way. That runs in inky trails down gold and quivering flesh. That is theirs, here, and now, and in all those days which beckon and gleam before them.


End file.
